Friday, October 26, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 October 2018 - 1 November 2018

It's been a kind of quiet lead-up to Halloween this year, in part because some places don't have the space and one big horror movie sucked all the air out of the room - and, weirdly, two things that could have been fun tie-ins (Suspiria '18 and Rampant) look to be delayed until next week.

Indeed, the big release this weekend looks like it's kind of being dumped, with Hunter Killer not a slasher villain but a description of an attack submarine, which has Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman sneaking into Russian waters and having to rescue the Russian president, and I'm not sure when in the past decade that part of the story made sense. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. For something lighter, there's Johnny English Strikes Again, with Rowan Atkinson reviving his third-most popular role for more slapstick silliness. But, hey, Emma Thompson's in it too! That's at Boston Common and Revere.

Halloween-week specials include duelling Disney flicks: AMC gets Hocus Pocus, playing at Boston Common, while Regal has The Nightmare Before Christmas at Fenway. There's also more screenings of Rocky Horror than usual - 9pm Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday at Boston Common, late Friday and early Monday at the Center for the Arts in Natick, and 8pm on Wednesday at the Somerville Theatre - and spots that thought they were done with Hell Fest (Boston Common, South Bay, Revere) are bringing it back for some late shows. Beetlejuice plays CinemaSalem Friday, on the Icon-X screen in the Seaport on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, and another show at Revere on Tuesday night.

In other one-offs, Spirited Away plays Fenway and Revere, dubbed on Sunday and Tuesday, subtitled on Monday. Showcase is using one screen for a selection of Illumination movies, with Despicable Me, The Lorax, The Secret Lives of Pets, and Sing playing in different arrangements all week. The version of Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Doctor plays Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Monday. Fenway (at least) has previews of the new Suspiria on Halloween, while Boston Common has a special Imax preview of Bohemian Rhapsody the same evening.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere all pick up Mid90s, which follows a 13-year-old who escapes a troubled home life by skateboarding in Los Angeles. The Coolidge also has two shows a day of documentary The Price of Everything, which looks at the role commerce plays in the art world, in the Goldscreen, aside from a special screening on Friday night with a post-film panel.

Their After Midnite screenings this weekend include the only booking in the Boston area for the new restoration of John Carpenter's The Fog on Friday, and their overnight Halloween Horror Marathon on Saturday, kicking off with the 1953 The War of the Worlds, and Ridley Scott's original Alien, with five unannounced movies after that, the whole thing on 35mm - and then on Halloween night, they have a double feature of Carpenter's original Halloween and a 35mm print of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. They also have an English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service on Saturday morning,

In addition to Mid90s, Kendall Square picks up What They Had, which stars Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon as adult children trying to deal with their father (Richard Forster) and mother (Blythe Danner), the latter of whom is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. They also have documentary Studio 54, which, as you may expect, covers the iconic disco in 1970s New York.

The Brattle Theatre opens a new restoration of Barbara Loden's Wanda, with Loden writing, directing, and playing the title character, a woman for whom a criminal scheme is the next piece of trouble in a life spinning out of control. It has most of the weekend, although there's also a 35mm screening of Gods and Monsters on Saturday, part of a tie-in to the Harvard Film Archive's Frankenstein weekend.

On Monday, they've got a DocYard screening of Our New President, which tells the story of Donald Trump's election through Russian Propaganda, with Maxim Pozdorovkin in attendance. After that, it's the back half of Halloween series Strange Frequencies, with two days of double features - It! & Pi (both 35mm) on Tuesday and Donovan's Brain & The Cabin in the Woods (35mm) on Wednesday - before guest programmer Peter Bebergal hosts a special screening of a 1970s cult TV movie on Thursday.

The new Hindi movie at Apple Fresh Pond this week is Andhadhun, which looks like a bit of an Indian riff on Blind Detective, as a visually-impaired man and a pretty new companion solve a mystery. They also continue Badhaai Ho and Vada Chennai, with Kayamkulam Kochunni playing Friday through Sunday. They also have English-language indie Stella's Last Weekend, with Nat and Alex Wolff playing two brothers in love with the same woman; it's written and directed by Polly Draper, who also created the Naked Brothers Band series they did as kids.

Elsewhere, some Spanish-language movies grab some screens at the multiplexes. Trabajo Sucio plays Revere, coming from the Dominican Republic and featuring a group of servants at a mansion who find a cache of money and likely turn on each other as well as their employers looking for more. El Pacto plays Boston Common, and from the name, it sounds like Belén Rueda is playing a woman who makes a deal with the devil to save her daughter's life. Cantonese-language Project Gutenberg looks like it may wind up with a whole month at Boston Common, a nifty surprise for us Chow Yun-fat fans!

The Harvard Film Archive is almost all about The Afterlives of Frankenstein on 35mm this week, with James Whale's classic version playing Friday evening and Saturday afternoon (a special $5 matinee with Tim Burton's original "Frankenweenie" short on digital), Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein at 8:30pm Friday, Bride of Frankenstein Saturday at 7pm, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Saturday at 8:30pm, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein Sunday at 7pm, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man at 7pm Monday (on 16mm), a marathon reading of Mary Shelley's novel Wednesday morning and afternoon, and a special late show of Young Frankenstein at 10pm that evening.

The Museum of Fine Arts has more of the Boston Palestine Film Festival, including The Man Who Stole Banksy (Friday), Writing on Snow (Saturday), What Walaa Wants (Saturday), an immigrants shorts program (Sunday), and Naila and the Uprising with the producer on-hand (Sunday). They wrap the October schedule with two more screenings of I Am Not a Witch (Saturday and Wednesday) while fittingly ending Let the Devil In: 50 Years of British Horror on Halloween with The Wicker Man and a 35mm print of Hellraiser.

Boston Asian-American Film Festival has a second weekend in the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater this year, with director Adele Pham on-hand for her documentary featurette Nailed It (Friday), an "Altered Realities" shorts program (Friday), An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy with director Dianne Fukami (Saturday), centerpiece show Fiction & Other Realities (Saturday), Antonia Grace Glenn with her documentary The Ito Sisters (Sunday), and closing night film For Izzy with director Alex Chu.

Bright Lights brings back BUFF closing film Good Manners on Tuesday for some pre-Halloween scares, while IFFBoston co-presents Dawnland with directors Adam Mazo & Ben Pender-Cudlip discussing their film about Native Americans forcibly taken from their homes to be raised by white families on Thursday.

The Regent Theatre has a Harry Houdini Halloween Happening on Friday, with Jeff Rapsis accompanying Houdini's silent adventure feature Terror Island while magicians David Garrity and Matt Roberts perform magic and the traditional Halloween seance (Houdini always promised he would bring back word if there was an afterlife, but he never shows at these things). They also show Nepali film Chhakka Panja 3 on Sunday evening.

The ICA has a special pre-release screening of Julian Schanbel's At Eternity's Gate on Thursday, with Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh and Oscar Isaac as Paul Gauguin in a film based upon Dafoe's letters. It's free, but museum members can reserve seats.

Last chance to see First Man in Imax this weekend, so I'll probably head to the furniture store for that, trying to also catch up on Free Solo, The Old Man and the Gun the new Halloween, and whatever else I'm behind on while it's quiet.